Posted By Daniel Greenfield On December 31, 2013 @ 9:24 am In The Point | 3 Comments

If any of the police investigators in Turkey who still haven’t been fired by the Erdogan regime are looking to track down where some of the stolen money went, they might want to look at the same place the Egyptian cops are looking; Gaza.

Israel’s intelligence community has determined that Turkey became the lead financier of Hamas. Israeli sources said Turkey replaced Iran as the leading financial backer of Hamas since 2012.

The sources said the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has overseen the transfer of up to $250 million a year to Hamas, particularly the Islamic regime in the Gaza Strip.

“The money is channeled mostly through private sources, but with full coordination with Erdogan and his aides,” a source said.

The sources said Turkey has coordinated the cash transfers with another ally of Hamas. They said Erdogan was working with Qatar, which has been hosting the Hamas leadership since its expulsion from Syria in late 2011.

Turkey has been deemed the only NATO member to recognize Hamas. The sources said Ankara has hosted a Hamas presence, led by Salah Al Arouri, that facilitates operations and cash transfers, mostly to the West Bank.

In 2012, Qatar pledged $400 million to the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. But the sources said most of the money failed to arrive because of Doha’s crisis with the new military-backed regime in Cairo.

Turkey was also said to have provided training to Hamas security forces. They said the Turkish training, provided by non-government elements aligned with Erdogan, was touted as efforts to enhance order in the Gaza Strip.

The fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Sunni-Shiite war over Syria has alienated Hamas from its traditional funding sources. If Erdogan falls in Turkey, a new government may prove to be just as hostile to his old terrorist allies as the new Egyptian government was to Morsi’s Hamas allies.